Nobody likes to be the victim of a crime. In my lifetime, I have been burgled several times, suffered a knife attack while teaching and been involved in several road incidents – we used to call them accidents, but they rarely are accidents – as well as seen attempts at pilfering my identity; often after I have just moved from one property to another.

According to the Thames Valley Police crime information site comparison Cherwell District has the highest rate of shoplifting in the Thames Valley, even worse than Oxford in the year to March 2017.

Whether that will change with the opening of the Westgate Centre, only time will tell. Interestingly, it is difficult to tell exactly how many recorded shoplifting crimes there have been at the Bicester Village complex. However, such crimes do account for a significant proportion of the shoplifting locally.

The good news is that figures for burglaries in Bicester are relatively low and much of Bicester’s crime is concentrated in and around the town centre, where public order offences inevitably feature highly in the statistics. However, there has been a spate of cycle thefts recently around the town. Historically, this was a crime largely confined to towns such as Oxford and Cambridge but as cycling has grown in popularity, cycle theft has become more of a problem. Solving this sort of crime isn’t often high on police priority lists even though it is annoying to those that suffer from such thefts.

The pressure on police budgets and the need to divert resources away from other work onto anti-terrorism activities will have an impact on local policing in the Bicester area. Oxfordshire is a high cost area in which to live and this has caused difficulties for all public services, including the police, as relative pay levels for public sector workers have fallen since the start of the recession a decade ago.

As most crime is still local in nature, committed by those living in or close to the communities where the crime takes place, I am fully committed to the importance of neighbourhood policing and the need to build relationships with communities. Whether they are Community Support offices or fully warranted police officers, those on the beat have a key role to play in both keeping our communities crime free and being the ears and eyes of public protection.

My concern is that crime should also dealt with and sentenced locally. The closure of Bicester Magistrate’s court leaves only Oxford and Banbury courts to deal with all the crime throughout the county. Centralisation also means everyone, whether witness, victim or defendant has to travel to the assigned court. This could mean them all being on the same bus to Oxford: not a sensible outcome. I support the need for a network of local courts that can provide both speedy and local justice for the majority of petty crimes.

The Coalition government reduced prison numbers for young people under eighteen, from over 2,500 in 2007 to around 1,000 now. Sadly, because of cutbacks to youth justice provision and the attitude of some schools once they become academies, not fortunately in Bicester, to increasing exclusions of challenging pupils, youth offending is at risk of rising again. The cost to society of not working to reduce crime among young people, something Oxfordshire used to do very well, especially among the team in the Bicester area, is misery for those that become the victims of crime. Cutting funding to public services and to crime prevention and policing is a false economy that just costs more later.